FanHouse Plaxico Burress

Each week in the NFL, there are players that impress and players that distress. One week a certain quarterback might toss four touchdowns and run around pointing skyward, while the next he's laying on his back, holding his facemask as the other team returns one of his three interceptions for the game-winning score. With that in mind, here's Studs and Duds.

Studs

Kurt Warner, QB Arizona (22-32, 261 yards, 5 TDs, 0 INTs) -- Last week, Warner had five interceptions, looks his age, didn't appear to be comfortable with a receiving core most would quarterbacks in the league would die for. This week, in a much-needed victory over the Chicago Bears, Warner flipped the switching, tossing five touchdowns to tie his career high and put his Cardinals back in the driver's seat of the NFC West.

UPDATE: It seems that Padilla did not shoot himself, but was in fact shot by a shooting instructor. Full details here.

Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Vicente Padilla is back home in his native Nicaragua now his team's season has ended, and while there he's decided to do some hunting. Unfortunately for Vicente it seems his aim with a gun is a lot like his aim with his fastball. Sometimes he loses control of the thing and ends up hitting somebody.

Though this time it was himself.

Padilla was treated in a hospital on Tuesday after suffering what is being called a "minor" gunshot wound to his right leg.

A former Giants teammate who spoke with Plaxico Burress hours before he was sentenced to two years in prison on gun charges Tuesday said that Burress told him it was "just beginning to dawn on me I am going in.''

As has often been the case, Burress got it late. Way too late. Executives from the Steelers (where Burress played from 2000-2004) and Giants (2005-2008) painted a similar picture of their time with Burress.

Even so, the league office and each NFL team took notice of Burress clinging to his son before walking that lonely plank into confinement -- they did not have to know him well to feel compassion and concern. Or to use this as one more tool to educate their players on guns and football, how the mix is not natural. Only with education and responsibility can both co-exist. That is the NFL's continued mantra.

They know the next NFL gun case will surface.

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Plaxico Burress received a rude welcome to prison life Tuesday. When he arrived at Rikers Island to begin a two-year sentence, his fellow inmates taunted him -- sometimes obscenely -- and heckled him with taunts of "Giants Suck," jail guards told the New York Post.

Cue the most obvious statement you'll read all day:

"He was depressed," one of the guards told the Post after Burress spent his first night behind bars. "He was trying to keep to himself, but everyone was yelling at him."

NEW YORK (AP) -- Former Super Bowl hero Plaxico Burress tearfully told his family goodbye as he was led away to prison Tuesday after being sentenced to two years on a weapons charge.

Burress was so soft-spoken during his apologetic courtroom address that onlookers could not understand him.

Burress, at the time a star receiver with the New York Giants, was at the Latin Quarter nightclub in Manhattan last November when a gun tucked into his waistband slipped down his leg and fired, wounding him in the thigh.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- They may not yet have looked it this preseason, but the Giants are good. As currently constructed, they must be counted among the favorites in the NFC when the season begins in two weeks. Their biggest problem, however, is the same one they had last December -- their downfield deep threat is headed to prison and they don't seem to have anybody on the roster with whom to replace him.

So soon after the Plaxico Burress fiasco, the Giants don't necessarily want to pursue disgruntled Denver receiver Brandon Marshall. But they haven't ruled it out either, and how could they? You watch the Giants play, and the deficiency is obvious. They may well be one star receiver away from being a Super Bowl team. Which is why Saturday's game -- a game in which Steve Smith and Mario Manningham were dropping passes left and right -- would have gone down as another lost night if not for the spectacular fourth-quarter performance of first-round draft pick Hakeem Nicks.

One day, he was as big a star in New York's sports galaxy as any. The next day, he was being jettisoned from it after being convicted of violating a federal law and faced with a possible jail sentence.

I'm not referencing Plaxico Burress just yet, however. I'm talking about Yankees owner George Steinbrenner back in 1974. The shipping magnate turned baseball owner was busted for making illegal contributions to President Nixon's 1972 campaign.

Steinbrenner, like Burress, agreed to a plea deal. Fourteen criminal counts against him were cut to one felony and a misdemeanor and The Boss wound up being fined $15,000 and never had to go behind bars. Fifteen years later, President Reagan, in one of his final acts, pardoned Steinbrenner.

Burress won't be so lucky, but he should be.

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The NFL preseason is normally a sleepy time that football fans pay attention to intermittently, mostly to make sure that none of their team's star players find themselves being carted off on a stretcher. Few of the games are appointment viewing, however, because it isn't all that often that games that don't count can generate enough interest to keep people inside on summer nights.

2009 has proven to be a big exception, though. Tuesday brought confirmation from Andy Reid that Michael Vick will make his Eagles debut against the Jaguars on Thursday night, which means that contest will join Brett Favre's first game as a Viking, Tom Brady's return from a knee injury and the first game at the new Cowboys Stadium as momentous August events for the NFL.

From now until the regular season begins, Fantasy Flings is where you'll find interesting story lines about your favorite teams from training camp. If there is a position battle, a nagging injury, a comeback story or a youngster rocketing up the depth chart, we'll let you know the fantasy implications.

Dallas Cowboys
What if I told you that one of the most impressive players for the Dallas Cowboys thus far has been quarterback Tony Romo? In two preseason games he's completed 22-of-30 passes and thrown for 228 yards and a touchdown. In camp he's building a nice relationship with Roy Williams and he's making good on his off-season promise to work on protecting the ball. He's going to miss the top-tier talent of wide receiver Terrell Owens, but not the antics. Even without Owens, Romo is showing that by spreading the ball around he's going to produce this season very similarly to years past, maybe even more.

Former New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress says in an interview to be aired Tuesday night on ESPN's E:60 that he deeply regrets his decision to bring a loaded gun into a nightclub in New York City, and that he knows he has himself to blame for the two-year prison sentence he expects to receive after pleading guilty to felony weapons charges.